Trials of the Heart (Duelists) - Dividends
by Kitt Chaos
Summary: Real dragons are a real delight, but also a real problem. Kaiba has to find a real solution, real soon or find himself up to his neck real quick in a real(ly) icky situation. Cracky AU.


Disclaimer – Mr. Takahashi's characters still have a firm grasp on my imagination. I own no rights to Mr. Takahashi's work, just an appreciation for his world of Yu-Gi-Oh! including the dratted Seto Kaiba (who won't let me be, but won't behave in the Plushi-oh! story – the stall there is his fault).

**Trials of the Heart (Duelists) - Dividends**

Kaiba reached for the next piece of mail on his desk, one of the few that made it past his secretary as important enough or private enough to merit his personal attention and opened it. All the mail - bills, accounts payable, accounts receivable, licenses, patents, applications, and so forth that dealt with the ebb and flow of business at Kaiba Corporation were sifted, sorted, opened and handled by Kaiba's executive secretary and his staff. Most of them were taken care of completely out of his sight - the proper application of the rubber stamp bearing his signature (though the method Kaiba Corporation used was nowhere near as crude as a rubber stamp) was the extent of his involvement. Likewise any mail dealing with property taxes, utilities, the costs of maintaining and running a mansion, his helicopter, jet, fleet of cars and such were the duty of the man who also ably managed his household staff. Only letters and documents that centered on himself or Mokuba directly made it to his desk in a completely unopened state. This particular letter was from the Environmental Protection Agency. They had denied his appeal. _Wish I had a Plan B_, Kaiba thought to himself as he sighed and reached for the next document. This one was the standard bi-weekly state of the business report - something of a snapshot of how his company was doing. As he picked it up something underneath fluttered to the floor. Kaiba leaned over to snag it. _Just a few pennies a day can feed..._ He immediately realized it was a piece of junk mail that had made it past the screeners. Things suddenly combined in an unholy way in the agile mind of the troubled CEO and he cackled to have found a way out of a very serious problem...

_Wait... I need to think it through._ Kaiba threw the brakes on his own elation and forced himself to slow down and take it from the top. At some point in the not too distant past, some agency, either that thousand-time cursed Pharaoh, or the misbegotten Isis woman whose predictions were never right, or that raving lunatic brother of hers, or...

Well, one of the 'mystical powers' _snort!_ that be in the world had done - something - to render all high-ranking duelists' monsters real. It was world-wide, whatever it was. Those who now had incarnate duel monsters were called 'heart duelists' (Kaiba mentally snorted again) because their deep belief in the 'heart of the cards' determined which duel monsters were now real in the world.

Yay. Motou had his Dark Magician to hang around with; no one messed with Taylor because of the gun-toting Cyber Commander following him (even that idiot Wheeler treated him with a modicum of respect now after Cyber Commander trained his laser scope on Joey for punching Taylor in the arm); and Gardner traded fashion tips with her new best gal-pal the Magician of Faith.

Kaiba had his dragons. All three of them. It had been Taylor, oddly enough, who had made a rather arch and snarky observation that obviously Kaiba thought he was a god as his 'soul' incarnated in triplicate form, just like another Trinity...

At first, he'd been elated. Three Blue-Eyes White Dragons at his beck and call? Real, forever and ever? Then, reality had set in.

Feeding them had been a problem at first. Not that the dragons were picky - anything but - but the sheer volume of kibble; cat, dog, hamster, horse, chicken-feed, hay, straw - was enough to make even Kaiba stagger a bit. After a week he'd realized he could bankrupt Kaiba Corp. pretty quickly if he weren't careful.

It had been Mokuba who'd unwittingly found the solution. The kid was spoiled - it was Kaiba's right and privilege to spoil his younger brother if he wanted - but he'd never been a back-talking brat before. Mokuba was jealous that his favorite monster, the Lord of Dragons, hadn't become real, too. After enduring a completely out of left field shrieking argument with his little brother, Kaiba had decided Mokuba needed something to take his mind off his jealousy. Rising from the depths of his memory was his mother's way of dealing with him when he'd gotten bratty - and so Mokuba now had Chores. Well, one Chore. Kaiba didn't want his brother to resent him too much, and really, how hard was it to take out the garbage once a day? Pull the bag from the trashcan in the house, use a twisty tie to close it, take it round back, and toss it in a bin. Oh, and once a week, haul the trash bins down to the curb for pick-up. Easy.

What Kaiba hadn't taken into account was the sheer volume of trash generated by the Kaiba Mansion - as opposed to the significantly lesser amount of trash produced by a typical family household. After hauling his twenty-first bag of trash out on the first day, and not being finished yet, Mokuba had had it. Kaiba had given strict orders (despite protests from the staff who'd known full well the scope of the job he'd saddled Mokuba with) that no one was to help Mokuba in any way with his single Chore.

Anyway, fed up with it all, Mokuba had paused on the way to the trash building on the Kaiba grounds to glare at the offending dragons. Injustice welling in his rebellious breast, he hurled the garbage bag at one of them, who caught it mid-air and gulped it down. The other two dragons sped over eagerly at that to be 'fed' too. Smiling, Mokuba happily fed his detested Chore to the hated dragons and hoped they'd all choke and die.

They didn't. Kaiba was so happy (and one of his staff got it through his stubborn head that there was no way Mokuba could be expected to take on the job that four full-time servants did) that Mokuba's Chore was rescinded, and the problem of feeding his dragons was no more.

However...

It would have to be worded very well. Only the hyper-rich would have the 'opportunity' and Kaiba didn't want them wriggling away too easily.

The few, immensely wealthy individuals in the world were going to have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to own a stake in something so precious and rare that Kaiba was certain they would take the bait - er, jump at the chance.

Let the blue-collar workers of the world help by sponsoring an underprivileged child - content with their letters and pictures of the poor soul they were helping with their spare change. The super-elite could sponsor a Blue-Eyes White Dragon. It would be quite a coup to be one of the few who could boast some sort of almost-ownership in these awesome beasts. To sponsor a dragon! Possessing such a sponsorship would become the ultimate fashion accessory - the 'must have' to prove one's place in the highest echelons of privilege and society.

Not that he needed it, now, what with Mokuba's brilliant but unplanned discovery of how to keep pace with the dragons' appetites - but a new dragon-related problem had presented itself: the dragons' waste products. The letter had been the final decision from the EPA. They wouldn't permit the local refuse collectors to simply take it away and put it in the landfill. Ditto for burning it, or sinking it in the nearby waterway.

_Yes, this will work, _Kaiba thought. The sponsorships for the dragons would be in perpetuity. Even when the original benefactor of the sponsorship died, the share in the dragon would settle upon his or her estate and could never be returned to Seto Kaiba, Kaiba Corporation, Mokuba Kaiba, or any other legal entity related to or affiliated with the Kaiba family.

Instead of snapshots, heartfelt letters, and updates about how a sponsor had improved a child's life, the individual sponsoring a Kaiba dragon would receive a full color, glossy, very chic, very professional picture of the sponsored dragon. And, once a quarter, once a month, or once a week if needed, a very special package that only one who had sponsored a Kaiba dragon could ever own would arrive. A - 'dividend', as it were.

Dragon fewmets - at least until now - had been rare artifacts indeed. It was only right for Kaiba to 'share the wealth' of his dragons' bounty with those individuals kind enough - and rich enough - to afford to sponsor one (or more) of his dragons. It was the least he could do.

_  
Author's note

This is a strange little one-shot that has been languishing on my computer for a couple of years. It seemed as if a story-verse would present itself where I could explore certain Duel Monsters being real and the humorous complications that could arise, but it never quite panned out. Ultimately the Yugitachi has mostly human-shaped favorite Duel Monsters (Dark Magician is freakishly tall, but also a magician, so I bet it's not a problem in the end), and I'm not fond enough of Rex and Weevil to write about the problems they could conceivably have with the Insect Queen and Two-Headed King Rex.

Still... I can never rule further stories out. For instance, it may not necessarily be the _favorite_ monster that becomes incarnate for a heart duelist - perhaps a monster incarnates because he has a favorite duelist instead (a subtle distinction, but one that could be fun to play with where Yami is concerned).

Oh, in case anyone was wondering (and their dictionary doesn't contain the archaic word) fewmets are the animal droppings that medieval hunters used to track and find their prey. So, yeah. Seto has a problem finding a solution for getting rid of dragon droppings. See? Yu-Gi-Oh! is educational! ^_~


End file.
